Judge rejects bid to release Arizona sheriff’s office from supervision in racial-profiling case

PHOENIX — A judge who ruled 13 years ago that Latinos were racially profiled in then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration crackdown in Arizona has rejected a bid to end the court’s supervision of the Sheriff’s Office.

Maricopa County failed to show that the objectives of the court’s orders — such as correcting the practices that led to the profiling — had been achieved, U.S. District Judge Murray Snow said in a ruling Thursday. He also found “a durable remedy” hadn’t been established to ensure the violations wouldn’t occur again if court supervision ended.

County officials, frustrated with the steep costs of court supervision, had argued that Arpaio’s immigration policies are no longer in place, that racial bias no longer infects its operations and its last two studies of traffic stops show the Sheriff’s Office has changed. The U.S. Department of Justice, which in the past had frequently sided with plaintiffs, supported ending court supervision.

The case centered on 20 large-scale traffic patrols launched by Arpaio that targeted immigrants from January 2008 through October 2011. The patrols involved large numbers of sheriff’s deputies flooding an area of metro Phoenix — including some Latino neighborhoods — over several days to stop traffic violators and arrest other offenders. The plaintiffs were Latinos who had been stopped, detained, questioned or searched by Arpaio’s officers while in a vehicle in Maricopa County.

The judge’s ruling from 13 years ago required expensive court-ordered overhauls of the agency’s traffic patrol operations and, later, its internal affairs unit.

In his latest ruling, Snow called into question the studies cited by the county.

In analyzing the duration of stops, the Sheriff’s Office excluded the longest stops, such as those involving suspected drunk drivers, language barriers and other factors. The excluded encounters accounted for at least half the agency’s stops in 2024 and 2025, the judge said.

Snow then cited analysis from a plaintiffs’ expert who evaluated all traffic stop data in 2023 and 2024.

The expert found a 4.7-minute difference in stop duration between Latino and white drivers. Snow wrote that “these figures differ drastically from the relatively minute, statistically insignificant differences” found in the agency’s reports that excluded the longer stops.

Snow said the county offered limited evidence to explain the disparities.

While the county was seeking to end all supervision of the Sheriff’s Office, the judge directed lawyers on all sides to determine whether there might be certain requirements they would agree could be done away with from the court orders.

In a statement, two leaders on Maricopa County’s governing board expressed disappointment in the ruling and signaled the county would appeal.

“Continued federal oversight of MCSO would serve only to further deplete public funds and divert taxpayer dollars from the sheriff’s primary responsibility: fighting crime and protecting public safety,” said board Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko.

In a statement, Sheriff Jerry Sheridan’s office said it believed it “has implemented durable remedies for violations that occurred 19 years and three administrations ago.” The agency said it looks forward to working with the opposing side to see if portions of the order can be eliminated.

Arpaio, who was voted out of office in 2016, was found in both civil and criminal contempt for disobeying a 2011 order to stop his traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. He was spared a possible jail sentence when his misdemeanor conviction was pardoned by President Trump in 2017.

U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, the Republican challenger to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, has criticized the official who was hired by the court to monitor the Sheriff’s Office and has proposed legislation that would impose term limits and compensation caps on such monitors.

Billeaud writes for the Associated Press.